First ever color X-ray on a human • Hacker News Board

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#31

Post by 1996 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

ortusdux wrote: post #13

The videos on their press page are stunning. Especially the ankle rotation video. https://www.marsbioimaging.com/mars/media-pack/ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JyRdqyU-j5PambGUgfs4Cx5uKf3...

Doesn't look that much better than a thin slice CT with custom colormaps ("CLUTs"), using a regular greyscale for the high density tissue (bone), and a reduced alpha channel for the low density tissue rendered in yellow.

You can get that with a Dicom station and 5 minutes, or for free using Osirix at home and trial/error if you are not used to CTs.

Ask for the CD next time you get a scan, or download one of the many examples, and play with Osirix.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#32

Post by ashildr » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

notadoc wrote: post #22

nathan_f77 wrote: post #7

This feels like a real black swan event to me. I guess I just assumed that black-and-white x-rays were as good as it gets, and that there wasn't any room for improvement. I've never even thought about the idea of a color x-ray. It's very exciting to see something that could change the entire field of radiology.

OsiriX (and others) have been rendering radiology imaging in color and 3D for quite a while. https://www.osirix-viewer.com/osirix/osirix-md/ https://www.osirix-viewer.com/resources/dicom-image-library/ Patients can even download the lite version and review their own images.

While the title is disingenuous because it’s easy to misunderstand it’s actually very close to the truth. Xrays are just a very energetic form of light or electromagnetic radiation, above the spectrum of visible light.

Until now we only measure the general brightness of the xrays, and osirix translates (even marginal) differences in brightness into different colors. This makes features of the same brightness easier to spot for a human.

This new technique actually measures different wavelengths of the xrays on our detectors and since we call the different wavelengths in visual light "color" it's a good analogy to call them the same for xrays. It can differentiate different colors of xrays.

This is really promising, nuances in chemical composition may lead to differences in opacity for different wavelengths.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#33

Post by zokier » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

phyzome wrote: post #18

matheist wrote: post #2

Article is short on details. Do they take pictures with X-rays at three different wavelengths, and then render the three resulting images as individual color channels?

> The colours represent different energy levels of the X-ray photons as recorded by the detector http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design-engineering-news/firs... There are a bunch of ways to convert that to an RGB display, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple rendering options you can flip between until you find the one that gives you the visual discrimination you're looking for.

My particle physics is bit fuzzy, but isn't the energy level of photon directly related to wavelength? So you could do a simple frequency shift (+compress) to visible light spectrum and map them to colors that way? Of course that is the naive approach, and might not be useful from medical perspective.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#34

Post by azeirah » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

nathan_f77 wrote: post #7

This feels like a real black swan event to me. I guess I just assumed that black-and-white x-rays were as good as it gets, and that there wasn't any room for improvement. I've never even thought about the idea of a color x-ray. It's very exciting to see something that could change the entire field of radiology.

Oh nonononono please no, no black swan event. The highest voted comment in this thread is very right.

I've worked on an X-ray machine during my second internship as an embedded engineer (fantastic internship!). My task was to optimize the way images and colors are presented to the viewer, given the measured X-ray data.

What I learned there is that whatever is presented to you on the screen is _completely arbitrary_.

When you have can measure a higher range of X-ray frequencies, you have more room to play with the colors. What colors you actually assign to the data is _absolutely arbitrary_, and technology similar to this has existed for a long time.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#35

Post by phyzome » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #33

phyzome wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The colours represent different energy levels of the X-ray photons as recorded by the detector http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design-engineering-news/firs... There are a bunch of ways to convert that to an RGB display, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple rendering options you can flip between until you find the one that gives you the visual discrimination you're looking for.

My particle physics is bit fuzzy, but isn't the energy level of photon directly related to wavelength? So you could do a simple frequency shift (+compress) to visible light spectrum and map them to colors that way? Of course that is the naive approach, and might not be useful from medical perspective.

Yeah, you could do a linear mapping, but you might want to stretch some regions and compress others. But overall it just sounds like a wavelength transform, yes.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#36

Post by CyberDildonics » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

nathan_f77 wrote: post #7

This feels like a real black swan event to me. I guess I just assumed that black-and-white x-rays were as good as it gets, and that there wasn't any room for improvement. I've never even thought about the idea of a color x-ray. It's very exciting to see something that could change the entire field of radiology.

This is an article with a few paragraphs that is sensationalizing what is available while showing a single photo. Let's not overdo the hype.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#37

Post by DINKDINK » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

lars_thomas wrote: post #17

Photon counting sensors have been available for quite a while. This is unfortunately not new. It’s not ’color’ it’s multi channel imaging. X-ray tubes produce wide spectrum of x-rays, these type of sensors are able to put different bands to different buckets. Coloring is arbitrary and conveniently chosen in the example to look like visible wavelength response as if the patient was dissected. It does not work for more…

>Coloring is arbitrary

By my understanding, it's not possible to determine an objections interaction characteristics with a wavelength of X with a wavelength of Y. (Unless you were able to create some sort of beat frequency tuned to mimic X by sending in Y+delta? Just thinking off the top of my head). It seems fraudulent for the company to say that it's capturing color.

>these type of sensors are able to put different bands to different buckets.

Would the best summarization be, photon counting sensors allow for the capture of x-ray imagine with higher dimensionality?

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#38

Post by nathan_f77 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

azeirah wrote: post #34

nathan_f77 wrote: post #7

This feels like a real black swan event to me. I guess I just assumed that black-and-white x-rays were as good as it gets, and that there wasn't any room for improvement. I've never even thought about the idea of a color x-ray. It's very exciting to see something that could change the entire field of radiology.

Oh nonononono please no, no black swan event. The highest voted comment in this thread is very right. I've worked on an X-ray machine during my second internship as an embedded engineer (fantastic internship!). My task was to optimize the way images and colors are presented to the viewer, given the measured X-ray data. What I learned there is that whatever is presented to you on the screen is _completely arbitrary_.…

Oh I see, yes it's a bit underwhelming if that's the case. I don't even know if "true color" x-rays would be very useful, but I was thinking that being able to view the actual color of the tissue might be useful, and could convey some information that you can't get from density.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#39

Post by ekun » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

lars_thomas wrote: post #17

Photon counting sensors have been available for quite a while. This is unfortunately not new. It’s not ’color’ it’s multi channel imaging. X-ray tubes produce wide spectrum of x-rays, these type of sensors are able to put different bands to different buckets. Coloring is arbitrary and conveniently chosen in the example to look like visible wavelength response as if the patient was dissected. It does not work for more…

Which similar to images we see of space where they have altered detectors' responses from different wavelengths of light to be images in the visible spectrum. So we produce beautiful images, but they aren't accurate to what space would look like to the naked eye.

Re: First ever color X-ray on a human

#40

Post by nathan_f77 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

notadoc wrote: post #22

nathan_f77 wrote: post #7

This feels like a real black swan event to me. I guess I just assumed that black-and-white x-rays were as good as it gets, and that there wasn't any room for improvement. I've never even thought about the idea of a color x-ray. It's very exciting to see something that could change the entire field of radiology.

OsiriX (and others) have been rendering radiology imaging in color and 3D for quite a while. https://www.osirix-viewer.com/osirix/osirix-md/ https://www.osirix-viewer.com/resources/dicom-image-library/ Patients can even download the lite version and review their own images.

Yes I wouldn't be so impressed with a colorized image if the source was just a regular x-ray. But my impression was that they were capturing multiple frequencies, so it was a lot of extra information to the image. I don't know anything about radiology but I'm always excited to see some progress.